So, do we indeed live in such a simulation? It seems to me that, contrary to Bostrom’s arguments, the BDS work in itself rules out that possibility, simply on the basis of the physical size of the computer that would be required. Any lattice simulating our universe would be very large. The whole universe, with a diameter of about 1027 m, would have to be represented by the lattice. If the simulation extends only out to the Oort Cloud, a diameter of 1016 m would have to be included. Using the largest BDS minimum lattice spacing of about 10-23 m, this would mean that the simulation array for the universe would have to need about 1050 elements on a side, or 1039 elements on a side for the Oort Cloud simulation. The each point on such a lattice would require the storage of some minimum number of bits, say 20, to represent its state. How densely could such information be stored in some hypothetical post-human supercomputer? Let’s extrapolate that the post-human supercomputer could be made of matter of nuclear density, say collapsed-matter neutronium, with the individual neutrons spaced 1 fm apart and that each neutron could somehow store 20 bits of information. The universe simulation, even neglecting the time dimension and using a 3-D cube rather than a 4-D hypercube, would have to be a cube 1035 meters (or 6.7 x 1023 light years) on a side. The Oort Cloud simulation would have to be a cube 1024 meters (or 6.7 x 1012 light years) on a side. There is not enough matter in the universe to construct such an object, and if constructed it would immediately collapse into a giant black hole. I conclude that not even Iain M. Banks Culture could manage such a feat. Unless there is something in the BDS assumptions that that is so wrong that changes the ground rules by 20 or so orders of magnitude, there is no way that our present world could be a computer simulation. Does anybody have information that can refute this? I will post the full article in the comments.
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 05:35:07 +0000
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